Pieter Claesz

Pieter Claesz painted breakfast pieces: a glass of wine, a pewter plate, a half-peeled lemon, a bread roll, a knife on a white cloth. His early still lifes use a subdued, nearly monochrome palette of greys, browns and silvers, and the real subject is light on different surfaces.

He was born around 1597 in Berchem, near Antwerp, and joined the painters’ guild in Antwerp before moving to Haarlem in 1620, where he spent the rest of his life. With Willem Claesz Heda he developed the restrained tonal still life that became typical of Haarlem. Some of his pictures include skulls and snuffed candles as reminders of mortality. His Still Life with Turkey Pie is in the Rijksmuseum, and other works hang in the Louvre, the Prado and Dresden. His son was the landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem. He died in Haarlem in 1660.

In his breakfast pieces, look at the reflections in the glass and metal.